Vibranium Substitute

 Vibranium Substitute

Taking the density of Vibranium Substitute being about 3 grams/cc, then a full body suit weighing about the same as your skin would weight about 9 kilograms, and be about 1.5 millimetres thick.

The Vibranium Substitute 'armour' is composed of 23 trillion trillion interlocking nanoscopic coil springs, so when they are impacted by kinetic attacks (such as a bullet or a fist), then it would compress absorbing that energy and store it in the winding of the springs.

The theoretical efficiency is probably only maybe 70% theoretically, and probably only 50-60% in practice.

I will work with 50% efficiency.

Part of the advantage of the interlocking coil springs is that the pressure (pounds per square inch) is not such a big deal. Think of instead of the full energy of the impact at only an area of 0.6 square centimeters, but instead spread over 1.5 meters, it hurts a lot less. It would only actually have to be spread out the kinetic energy to about 7 inches diameter to have the full effect.

This is a lot like being beaten with a phone book, but it is misleading because the phone book imparts a lot more momentum for the same kinetic energy which causes torsion issues. Average kinetic energy from a 9 millimeter bullet is about 500 joules. This is about the same amount of damage you get from jumping off two stairs or the same amount of walking in 19 mph wind. It's not a big deal because it is spread across your body, instead of concentrated in one small spot at the base of your skull. Bullets concentrate that force over a small area, so they hurt and penetrate more. With the coil springs the area is spread out over a large area, so the penetration is minimal.

In my example, this would be halved, as half of the energy would be absorbed by springs, converted into potential energy stored in the coil spring tension.

Rigidity is the major engineering restraints to get that to the theoretical maximum of 72% efficiency, mobility would be severely impaired.

Putting more nanotech as an underlayer in the form of nanoscale piezo-electric crystals could convert that coil tension into stored electrical energy. Again 50% efficiency is my working number.

So a 500 joule bullet, you would take half the damage, but spread out, no no biggie; a quarter of that can be stored as electrical energy you could use to store a weapon, and a quarter dissipated as heat.

Now fine fine, have a suit with a built in taser, now take that charge to divert that electricity to coil the springs in a different part of the body. And then release it suddenly in a contact kinetic attack. Again, I would consider 50% efficiency for easy numbers.

Put that in the soles of your boots, and you can have a fun superjump. Or in his hands and he can push that into a vehicle or wall, with some poppin' results.

How much can that 9 kilogram suit store? If the Vibranium Substitute is made from coiled Graphene, or more likely coiled boron nanotube, then it can hold about 22.5 megajoules, about the same as a kilogram of gasoline or 4 kilograms of TNT.

You would not be able to expel that much out thru your hands at once, only about 1.5% at a time max per hand. And that would hurt. That is still like being able to project about 3 ounces of TNT from your hand.

22 megajoules of storage would also be after you have been hit with 88,000 bullets, not likely. It does mean one wicked backhand blast per 10 bullet impacts, that's cool.

One nice side effect is that you could essentially double the height at which you could jump from safely.

Hyoomons have a maximum standing vertical leap of about 4 feet, which works out to about 5 m/s. Anyway, that 5 meters per second is about how much that athlete’s legs can absorb with no damage. Which is unsurprisingly about a jump from 4 feet. Wearing the vibranium substitute, Jordan could have the same no damage jump from 8 feet.

The maximum speed any human has moved under their own power was in the long jump, a colossal 13 m/s, which would be the same as jumping from 28 feet up, yow. I am guessing that barring things like landing on soft sand or the rolling landing, that is about how much you can do without dislocating your knees. You're still taking damage, but you can walk away from it (if you are like the top Olympic long jumper). That is about 7000 Joules, yow ow ow ow.

With the Vibranium Substitute, that same person could walk away from a leap from 56 feet up. Now we're in jumping from buildings like batman territory.

This would not make us Batman or Black Panther, nor even Michael Jordan or Bob Beaman (long jump world record holder), but it would enhance our performance.

I have an ordinary vertical leap, about 2 feet, more than good enough for a vicious game of volleyball. That is measured from the rise in center of gravity, details…math, stuff. So that puts me at about half of those numbers. So it would mean that if I learned how to land properly (from years of gymnastics and rock climbing) I could jump 'safely' from about 12 feet up and with the Vibranium Substitute from about 25 feet up.

Note that this does almost nothing to affect momentum, so you would still be tossed about by big impacts. Being whacked by a baseball bat and hit by a bullet has the same amount of kinetic energy, but the bat imparts nearly 17 times more momentum, so it knocks you back further.

Bullet 10.8 grams, 300 meters per second

Baseball Bat 3 kilograms, 18 meters per second

Same kinetic energy, one half mass times velocity squared so

Bullet kinetic energy is 0.5*0.0108*300*300 = 486joules

Baseball Bat kinetic energy is 0.5*3*18*18 = 486 joules

Bullet momentum mass time velocity so .0108*300 = 3.24 kg*m/s

Baseball Bat momentum mass time velocity so 3*18 = 54 kg*m/s

if you weigh 54 kilograms, you will find yourself moved backwards by the baseball bat at 1m/s, you will stumble back about 3 feet.

I won't go into how relative density, energy per square centimeter, and relative hardness affects penetration; another time. Blah blah blah, math math math, blah blah blah, more of the bullet's energy goes into penetration, more of the bat's energy goes into moving you backwards.

This came from someone dissing on the vibranium in some old movie. I explained how the movie explanation was comic book magic baby talk, but whatthe suit does is doable with real science. The science is there and the materials are known in proof of concept in the lab.

We're talking about embedding 9 trillion trillion tiny coil graphene or boron nanotube coil springs into a 9 kilogram suit. Remarkably expensive, but could however be considered reasonable for a space suit, it is a hazardous environment. For ordinary every day use, I use grapheme and boron nanotube infused spider silk clothing, it prevents any ordinary amount of wear and tear and environmental abrasion and blocks most penetration, and is aesthetically pleasing to the eyes and to the touch.

I am also thinking about a more ambitious version with some more active nano, so like a 100 kilogram version, more of an exoskeleton. It would allow you to essentially do the Iron Man drop from terminal velocity to a dead stop. There would be rigidity related mobility issues.

There is a precedent for this. Imagine Bronze Age warrior with actual steel weapons and armour, gifts from the 'gods'. They would be able to cut a swath of death and be virtually untouchable, almost like superheroes. Doesn't really eliminated the need for armies, but it makes the generals/kings much more heroic-ish.

In this case, the chain-mail is interlinked coil springs, but the principle would be the same.

1.5 millimeters with 2 million layers, means that a 9 millimeter bullet would spread it's energy out an additional 3 millimeters to its diameter. Only about a 44% reduction in the penetration, but the coils would absorb more of that energy.

43.75% efficiency would be the bare minimum efficiency, you can do that without nanotech or vibranium.

If instead of each coil neighboring 12 others, you can have each coil covered by 6 others, and you can spread that across the entire suit. It would mean a higher density, but that is where you get the optimal 72% efficiency. It would only work with the coil spring idea, not really possible for regular chainmail.

There is also the part where the rigidity will occur where the coils are tensed. Absorb a big enough hit and you will be unable to move. Preferable to dying.

You don't need to convert all of that mechanical tension potential energy to electrical energy to transfer it. You just need a mechanism to cause a given spring (or series of springs) to uncoil and by that process transfer their tension to neighboring springs. I bet it tingles and tickles. By this process, you can move the spring tensions to where you want to expel it.

Probably something simple like a small electrical charge will cause the unwinding. So long as the neighboring coils have less tension, they will accept the tension from the manual unwinding. If the area is isolated so that the other coils do not take the tension, then the kinetic energy is projected out of the suit.

Although this is really cool, this means there is the vulnerability that the entire kinetic energy of the suit can be discharged using a taser. Because of that limitation, perhaps the piezo-electric to a capacitor bank would work well. Batteries would be too slow to charge and to slow to discharge. It also means you can manually charge from a battery or capacitor pack to make your backhand blast. You should still have a battery pack that you can charge more gradually, so you don't keep things all pent up in the coils and capacitors, like a cocked gun, not good.

Penetration is determined mostly by relative hardness (tensile strength) and density. Lead bullets are 11.4 times the density of skin and are thus dense enough that they penetrate easily. Lead is 4 times the density of Boron Nitride, but is nearly 3000 times more hardness/tensile strength. It would take a hell of a hit to penetrate even 1.5 millimeters of the stuff.

Penetration is what makes relatively low amounts of energy do so much harm to people. I like this, something simple like clocksprings makes the armour even more resilient than just how strong it is and without having to resort to rigidity.